The present invention relates to a light-transmitting material that is formable in any flattened shapes such as plate-like, sheet-like and film-like shapes, and is applicable, for example, to motor vehicles, architectures and everyday items. More particularly, the present invention relates to a coloring structure for producing a color, which has not only an excellent visual quality with hue varying with the angle, depth and profundity, but a high design quality due to considerable hue difference between when seeing the structure from the side of an incident-light source and when seeing it from the side opposite thereto.
Generally, final coating for motor vehicles is in the form of a solid-color, metallic-color or pearl-color coating. The solid-color coating produces a predetermined tint by a color pigment. The metallic-color coating contains a color pigment and fine aluminum pieces to provide not only a color of the color pigment, but a design quality with sparkle due to irregular reflection of light produced by the aluminum pieces. The pearl-color coating includes a color-base coating and a transparent mica-base paint containing mica pieces applied thereon to provide not only sparkle like the metallic-color coating generated under the action of light reflected by a mica-base coating and light reflected by the color-base film, but softer reflected light than that of the metallic-color coating due to interference by the mica pieces. Recently, the use of special mica allows creation of a design quality with iridescence having hue varying with the angle.
Moreover, in the areas of containers, office-automation apparatus and home-appliance panels, a three-layer structure is provided, having a colored base layer, a pearl-mica layer and a transparent skin layer placed in this order so as to obtain a surface ornament for press-blow, blow-injection and babble-blow moldings.
As described above, there is a wide diversity of the design quality of various industrial goods in recent years. Under such circumstances, the development of new materials is demanded to enable a surface structure with novel design quality that is different from the metallic-color and pearl-color coatings.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a coloring structure for producing a color, which has not only an excellent visual quality with hue varying with the angle, depth and profundity, but a high design quality due to considerable hue difference between when seeing the structure from the side of an incident-light source and when seeing it from the side opposite thereto.
One aspect of the present invention lies in providing a coloring structure, comprising:
a base with light transparency;
a layer placed on at least part of said base; and
transparent brilliant members contained in said layer, each brilliant member including an alternate lamination of at least two polymers having different refractive indexes, each brilliant member controlling interfered light resulting from reflection and interference produced by said alternate lamination and transmitted light other than said interfered light and passing through said alternate lamination,
whereby the coloring structure is provided with a coloring mechanism for producing at least an interference color resulting from reflection and interference of an incident source spectrum produced by said brilliant members, a first transmitted color resulting from transmission of said incident source spectrum through said brilliant members, and a second transmitted color resulting from transmission of said incident source spectrum through said base and said layer without striking any brilliant members.
Another aspect of the present invention lies in providing a coloring structure, comprising:
a base with light transparency; and
transparent brilliant members dispersedly contained in said layer, each brilliant member including an; alternate lamination of at least two polymers having different refractive indexes, each brilliant member controlling interfered light resulting from reflection and interference produced by said alternate lamination and transmitted light other than said interfered light and passing through said alternate lamination,
whereby the coloring structure is provided with a coloring mechanism for producing at least an interference color resulting from reflection and interference of an incident source spectrum produced by said brilliant members, a first transmitted color resulting from transmission of said incident source spectrum through said brilliant members, and a second transmitted color resulting from transmission of said incident source spectrum through said base without striking any brilliant members.